It was a glorious return, and when the bachelors gave the Christmas Ball, William was, unofficially, you might say, the chief and honoured guest among the Stewards, who could make things very pleasant for their friends. She and Scott danced nearly all the dances together, and sat out the rest in the big dark gallery overlooking the superb teak floor, where the uniforms blazed, and the spurs clinked, and the new frocks and four hundred dancers went round and round till the draped flags on the pillars flapped and bellied to the whirl of it. About midnight half a dozen men who did not care for dancing came over from the Club to play "Waits," and that was a surprise the Stewards had arranged - before any one knew what had happened, the band stopped, and hidden voices broke into "Good King Wenceslaus," and William in the gallery hummed and beat time with her foot: "Mark my footsteps well, my page, Tread thou in them boldly. Thou shalt feel the winter's rage Freeze thy blood less coldly!" "Oh, I hope they are going to give us another! Isn't it pretty, coming out of the dark in that way? Look - look down. There's Mrs. Gregory wiping her eyes!" "It's like Home, rather," said Scott. "I remember -" "Hsh! Listen! - dear." And it began again: "When shepherds watched their flocks by night -" "A-h-h!" said William, drawing closer to Scott. "All seated on the ground, The Angel of the Lord came down, And glory shone around. 'Fear not,' said he (for mighty dread Had seized their troubled mind); 'Glad tidings of great joy I bring To you and all mankind.'" This time it was William that wiped her eyes. End of WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR - PART II THE SON OF HIS FATHER "It is a queer name," Mrs. Strickland admitted, "and none of our family have ever borne it, but, you see, he is the first man to us." So he was called Adam, and to that world about him he was the first of men - a man-child alone. Heaven sent him no Eve for a companion, but all earth, horse and foot, was at his feet. As soon as he was old enough to appear in public, he held a levee; and Strickland's sixty policemen, with their sixty clanking sabres, bowed to the dust before him. When his fingers closed a little on Imam Din's sword-hilt, they rose and roared - till Adam roared, too, and was withdrawn. "Now, that was no cry of fear," said Imam Din, afterwards, speaking to his companions in the Police Lines. "He was angry - and so young! Brothers, he will make a very strong Police officer." "Does the Memsahib give him the breast?" said a new Phillour recruit, the dye smell not yet out of his yellow cotton uniform. "Ho!" said an up-country Naik, scornfully. "It has not been known for more than ten days that my woman suckles him." He curled his moustaches as lordly as ever an Inspector could afford to do, for he knew that the husband of the foster-mother of the son of the District Superintendent of Police was a man sure of consideration.